Ironic that climate activists like Greta Thunberg are fighting against coal when they rejected nuclear power - Bill Carmichael

Along with other activists, she was briefly detained for an ID check, but was not arrested and will not be charged, according to police.

Video of the incident shows the Swedish environmentalist being carried away by the officers with what can only be described as a decidedly smug smile on her face.

I am pleased that Germany is the sort of robust and stable democracy where people are free to protest against the government without suffering dire consequences. If only the same could be said for Iran, Russia and China.

More than 15,000 activists attended the protest to argue that burning coal undermines Germany’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and makes a nonsense of the pledge to reach net zero by 2038.

To be honest I think they make some very good points. The Garzweiler 2 mine in Lutzerath in the west of the country is not just mining any old coal, but lignite, otherwise known as brown coal, the filthiest fuel on the planet, 25 million tonnes of it each year.

Last autumn the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany was reopening five power plants that burn lignite in a move that will pump many millions of tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere.

It is hard to reconcile all the pious pronouncements over net zero with the brutal reality of keeping the lights on, homes heated and factories working during the long, cold winter.

But although the protesters are right that the German government’s policy makes no sense at all, there is still a very delicious irony here.

For, the reason the Germans have made such an unholy mess of their energy policy is precisely because they followed so-called “green” environmental policies in the first place.

After the Fukushima nuclear accident in Japan in 2011, German environmentalists, backed by the powerful Green Party, demanded that the country shut down all its nuclear power plants, and the German government capitulated.

This despite the fact that nuclear is far and away the cleanest and safest way of producing a reliable source of electricity.

Despite incredibly rare incidents, such as the Fukushima accident, the number of deaths caused by nuclear power is dwarfed by the far higher casualty figures for coal mining and oil and gas extraction, and of course it is low carbon.

At the time this didn’t threaten to cause a problem. After all, Germany could always rely on a plentiful supply of cheap gas from Russia via the Nord Stream pipeline, couldn’t it?

It didn’t work out quite like that. Once Vladimir Putin had launched an imperialistic war against his peaceful neighbour, and shut down gas supplies to the West, Germany was left with insufficient gas and nuclear for its needs.

The only alternative was to start burning dirty coal again - and lots of it - to keep the lights on.

To sum up, the decision by Germany to follow a so-called “green” agenda has resulted in massive increases in carbon emissions.

No wonder Greta is laughing. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so serious.

It is easy to mock the German government, but such short term thinking is common in governments across the world, including here in the UK. For example there is a video doing the rounds from 2010 featuring the then Lib Dem leader and Deputy Prime Minister of the Coalition government, Nick Clegg, ruling out investing in nuclear power because “it wouldn’t come on stream until 2021 or 2022”.

Oh how we could do with that clean electricity now. If only we had politicians who could see beyond the length of their own nose, instead of idiots like Mr Clegg.

Of course renewable energy will play a significant role in our future energy policy, but by its nature it is intermittent and unreliable. We need a constant supply of energy for those times when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow. If you don’t want to burn coal or gas, that has to be nuclear power. And any environmental activist who witters on about a “climate emergency” and then turns round to oppose clean nuclear power, doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously.